I WANT NEW SPACES - rethinking safety and safe spaces (english)

Safety is not created by a fake love and light but an honest understanding and holding dark moments. Dark moments, where people are triggered by you and they´re allowed to express it and you hold them. This is embodied safety reaching a hand to the world and the wounds of those who carry them. It's a safety within and a safety that can't be described by words but felt within the body as a whole body relaxation and calmness. A safety that doesn't need to be explained because it can be feeled. A warm welcome of one heart to another. Safety is what happens when we accept our own imperfection and weaknesses, our own darkness that we carry as human beings. If we look into that, in our own dark, lonely and miserable moments we're able to look into those of others and create them only by knowing, seeing and witnessing, a space that is safe.

“Are you scared of me? What do I do to bring you into freeze mode? What is triggering you that you would like to leave the room, but you're not? Why are you not leaving and why are you not talking about it? What scares you so much that you choose to suppress instead of express?"

A space can only be safe, if there are questions (like those above) and answers that are allowed to be asked and replied: to be expressed. If we have to suppress anything, a space is never safe. N.E.V.E.R. 

I want new spaces. Exactly those spaces, where you as participants or clients (hereinafter referred to as participants) tell me the truth about what is going on in you. Especially if it´s caused by me as a space holder. Or if it´s a group setting, by other participants. Spaces where space holders are “brave enough” to confront themselves with their participants. Where participants are allowed to talk about their discomfort, where discomfort gets space and attention and is understood as it is: discomfort. N.O.T.H.I.N.G  E.L.S.E!

Why are we so scared of someone else's discomfort? 

Because we are scared that it could have to do something with us! We don't want to get into the discomfort of others because if it has to do with ourselves we have to confront ourselves with our shadows. And as we are striving for perfectionism we don't want to look into our own narcissism admitting that we maybe creating discomfort in someone else. It would feel too guilty or shameful, if it's something that is still an unhealed shadow in ourselves. But let me tell you that this is the whole point I'm talking about. This is your space holder or participant “part of the story”, this is your narcissism talking. This narcissism is protecting you. It's the ego talking in full power. In reality it has nothing to do with guilt or shame. It's actually overcoming guilt or shame. It's about having an honest look at yourself witnessing: okay I'm apparently making someone else uncomfortable. Okay.. And it is nothing bad if you make someone uncomfortable. It's something that can be talked, communicated, discovered, experienced. If you've "healed" already this wound, this narcissistic wound, connection gets better, it actually happens exactly then. 

I want new spaces, where we can exactly connect with each other by talking and expressing in a very soft, but honest way and learn to hold our own space and the space for others.

The questions that you might ask yourself in there are: 

• What is that causing in me? 

• Where in my body am I feeling certain sensations?

• How is my body reacting to that? 

  • my legs are freezing

  • my heartbeat increases

  • I'm feeling the tension in my stomach

  • my throat feels tight

  • etc.

The feelings are there, hello body, hello feelings. By welcoming instead of suppressing them we allow ourselves something: acceptance, permission and compassion. We witness instead of avoiding. We´re allowing ourselves just to be as we are.

Breathe in and breathe out. 

Thoughts might be:

• I want to leave the situation

• I don't want to feel this

  
  

And let me tell you, that in the next step you start 

• moving your toes

• your fingers

• your wrists

• your body 

• and shake it off, the tension, shake the tension off

  
  

That's what the whole thing is about. Take a moment to be with yourself. As a space holder, as a participant or whatever role. Care for yourself first before you come back to the other(s). It's not about pushing away, It's about witnessing what you feel and to care for you. And then come back more neutral and hold a hand for the discomfort that you created knowing well that it's not you creating the discomfort but just triggering it. As a space holder you guide your participants through their bodies. And you let them talk. Let them tell the things that are buried in them. And give them the possibility to express, relieve and release their body feelings.

It often happens in f.ex. hierarchical structures (and a space holder and participant constellation ist also often hierarchiclal) that there‘s no eye-level and triggers can‘t be expressed, because space holders first don‘t offer those kind of possibilities (also because the workshop or class as a different topic) and second they emain untouchable. I‘m sorry to say that. But it‘s my experience and therefor very sublejctive. As space holders we have a responsibility to look through that, to guide and to reach our hand that is needed to create an eye-level. And to give the possibility to express instead of suppress.

We need spaces where we as space holders, teachers or guides take this responsibility and even more: create spaces for healing hierarchical wounds. Where you as a space holder reach a hand on eye-level to your participants and work with those issues.

I want new spaces that are offering this kind of honesty and vulnerability and where we as space holders are not scared to show ourselves as that: as eye-level beings that make others open to talk about uncomfortable things, that CAN have to do with us or someone else in the space. To show them how to own their reactions and to guide them through even though it has to do with us. It's a big learning for both sides with an immense present of honest connection and safety as an outcome. 

So, showing and expressing us as vulnerable human beings is for me the biggest and bravest thing one can do for the world. I want to build this community. Where you can tell me that I'm triggering you and then we work it out together, through our body's and feelings. Through all the discomfort that is created in us to find release, to find our voices and expression in a real safe place to prepare and train us to do this in unsafe situations where the other person is not reaching us a hand. Let's create those spaces that train us in our safety within ourselves and that prepare us for the world and those people who think that we´re weak. The real empowerment is a peaceful one, where we highly sensitives are strong, look through the masks of others and don't soothe ourselves, but stand for ourselves and our points in calmness. The world needs us. Let´s create those spaces together and in community.